With the iPhone 4 camera, Apple realizes that one of the most important factors in the quality of your photos is your lighting. Rather than simply focusing on boosting the megapixels of the camera, they took steps to maximize the number of photons it can capture.
The iPhone 4 has taken the camera from 3 to 5 megapixels and has a backside illuminated sensor. Jobs notes that most manufacturers increase the megapixels at the expense of the pixel sensors, making them smaller to accommodate, but Apple has kept these sensors the same size as a way to capture more photons and give you better quality photos.
- 5 megapixel camera
- Backside illuminated sensor
- 1.75um size pixels
- 5x digital zoom
- Tap to focus
- LED Flash
The new camera also records video in HD (crowd went wild at that one). It can do full 720p at 30fps. “It’s REAL HD!,” says Jobs. Tap to focus is supported, along with built-in video editing, one-click sharing, and the LED flash will stay on while recording videos. To put this all into perspective, you can record HD quality video, edit it right there on your phone, and send it via e-mail, MMS, to MobileMe, YouTube, and others.
As if this wasn’t enough, they are taking things a step further by giving you iMovie for the iPhone. This will let you add beautiful transitions, titles, music, and intros from the palm of your hand. You can optionally include geolocation information for video clips. Record directly to the timeline, or choose from existing clips on your phone.
There is really nothing out there like this at all. High-definition video editing on your mobile device. This is something that video bloggers have probably been dreaming about. It could definitely change the video landscape. We are used to seeing choppy, low-quality videos with bad audio and no polish when it comes to real-time events. If it’s possible to carry iMovie around in your pocket, we may see the quality and presentation of videos on sites like YouTube shoot way up.
An HD Camera and iMovie could leave some video bloggers/journalists in the dust.